preparing 4 TransitionS

 We are at a point in history, where transitions are obviously needed. It is not since yesterday that this fact is known, but it is high-time now to get real - why not by writing a blog-post or even start a brand-new blog. Writing seems to be not an active part in a transition, more like a spectator a kind of orator, who is just commenting, re-acting and not playing an active role in the play. This is, however, a false dichotomy, because every step on this way to create this post, is based on decisions. Not only, the choice of words, but even the choice of the language and the choice of the photo, all is based on decisions. 

The colours of the photo (from Peter Tully) are also based on decisions and my choice of this marvellous photo is based on the title of the photo (of course transition!) and of the colours (green and blue), which are very telling for a transition. A green  for our blue planet, which is obviously a much harder task, than a lot of us expected. Seeing some transitions from afar gives an impression of the magnitude of the transition. The choice of the language is also a decisive factor, because English is enabling a more distant view, at least, when it about the description of landscapes or places, where English is not primarly used.  
   

Creating the means of propaganda❓

 "Propaganda" is a strong word, creating influential narratives would indicate a more balanced point of view. However, the word is used, because techniques and structures of influencing are addressed here and in this sense "propaganda" seems to be an honest word, naming and explaining structures of influence, which in a way can't be avoided, only reflected and re-framed. 

The starting point of the line of reasoning is the Netflix documentary Five Came back (Wp = Wikipedia gives some backgrounds), which is itself based on a book of Mark Harris. Both sources show, how Hollywood created the means of propaganda, which were not existent, before 1942, before the US entered WW2. Hollywood was already influential before 1942, but central was making money, not shaping the narrative. This changed with entering the Propaganda war and the documentation shows, how the famous film directors analyzed in the sources are developing the film film-language of propaganda. The book gives personal and biographical background of the six directors, referring to books and letters of (and about) the persons. The Netflix documentary shows part of the movies, with comments of six contemporary directors and offers direct access to movies. This shows in a direct and reflexive way the creation of the propaganda movies, possible only through the means of an internet streaming service. It would of course in theory be possible, to do this all via DVDs, but it would be more expensive and inconvenient. Netflix is using its potential to reflect on the development of media culture, a very laudable move indeed. I almost regret using the harsh word "propaganda", because the possibility to see and the movies and analyze them, is of course reflection and not propaganda. But the observer and critic of the media can't leave the visual media. Tony, the shinning alter ego of Danny in the film "The shinning" (Wp) calls the images we see, "pictures" ("It's just like pictures in a book, Danny. It isn't real" is the quote, in the sentence- context). We can't escape the media, but that is not all. There are consequences. They are related to Media in general (too big topic to continue on that here) and on mass-media (also a big topic, but I feel it can be reduced to a meaningful outcome here). Since the development of Hollywood propaganda movies (42 to 45), to the year 2021, the structures of Mass-Media changed, but some basic propaganda elements remained, constructing a second reality, a war-movie reality. On the level of the film-analysis it would be interesting to monitor if there are basic changes from the pre-propaganda area (see the film "Jurarez" as an example), but this would need a too long digression. On the level of the society (as world society), the new propaganda-films opened a new chapter for the society as cultural memory (see Luhmann 1996:173, English translation 2000:97). The development consists of two elements: the new forms (means) and as a function for society: self observation out of a memory. But this memory is nothing static, but something, which as to be renewed through new adaptations and narrations. And the other part is the theory  of a "just war" (Wp), which is traditionally not used in connection to the prevention of a Genocide. This seems to be a quite abstract and difficult angle to discuss films, but it seems to better and more consistent than just focussing on war battles in class, which I of course not do (Wabisabi learning).  

Luhmann, Niklas (1996), Die Realität der Massenmedien, English (2000): The realtiy of massmedia, Translated by Kathleen Cross, Stanford University Press                                                   

Polycentric backgrounds

 This post is motivated by the aim to give some backgrounds of a (so called) "lightning talk", because in oral explanations only few deeper backgrounds can be  conveyed. And moreover, because of the fact, that this (Lightening) talk was not delivered, this blog post is getting even more important and was there subsequently altered. The written explanation (of the talk), however, is without a common understanding of the spoken situation and has to be more explicit. Naturally also a written text has to rest on presumptions, it is also situated in a context, in this case the context of a blog about language policy. Readers of this blogs may have noticed, that this blog is using the Wikipedia as an important tool of reference. In general, it is the Wikipedia in English, which is cited here, another convention of texts (oral AND written) is, that they situated in linguistic context. A text, with the title "language lightning" is addressing this, but not for abstract reasons of "fairness", between languages, because of a principle, that calls on the equity of languages. The validity of this argumentation is not discussed here, the linguistic roots of nationalism and multilingualism are situated here in a different, in a political context. Defining "political" can also be done very rudimentary here, in a sense, that political is related to a power for change. Addressing Multilingualism can be seen as a power to change a political situation. This is an abstract, in positive sense, ideological concept applied by the EU and even more by the Council of Europe to transcendent linguistic power. To "Transcend power" does not mean to ignore it, it means to use it as a tool for reaching another level. Hannah Arendt gives in her lucid analysis of the US-constitution attention to the fact that the polycentric power-structure in the US-constitution leads to greater influence of that nation, then if the power is concentrated in one structure. This is a paradox at the first sight, because different power centers could block each other and the outcome would be lesser power for all acting parties. However on the long run polycentric structures not only more secure (checks and balances as a mechanism against dictatorship), but also generating power. The polycentric world of the national states can be seen as a very effective mechanism for preventing a world government. But on the other hand a unified stand against the global ecological problems of this planet seems to inevitable. Transferring this to the given situation: How the can the language of world power be used to create a unified stand against global challenges, while strengthening a polycentric power structure? Or in short, you to align with?              

 References:

Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution (Wp)  

Berlin, The Hedgehound & the Fox (Wp)

van Parijs, Philippe (2011), Linguistic Justice for Europe and the World, OUP             

Acquiring Resilience

 I have the honor to be participate in an International symposium about Foreign Language teaching and Learning Research in Japan (Link). The event is a real multilateral event, because it organized by organizations of six countries (Germany, China, France, Spain, South-Korea and of course Japan). I am an expert in a workshop-group  "Society and Multilingualism". There has been also presentations, before the symposium, which are accessible after a registration, but am unable to share them here publicly. My colleagues already started to discuss the topic "Multilingualism and Society" in an (closed) forum in an Moodle-environment provided by the Goethe-Institut. The chairman of our workshop-group has provided us with guidance topics for the discussion: 

1) How can we push Japanese companies (maybe the government also?) and make them accept students’ plurilingual ability properly?

2) How can we advocate pluralistic identities of plurilingual people (not just as a split identity) in a double-monolingual (only Japanese and English) society like Japan?

I will discuss these two topics and will add a third topic, which is the headline of the blog (Acquiring Resilience, WpE). 

I think it is very difficult to force (Japanese) companies towards Multilingualism. Japanese multinational companies, like Toyota or Rakuten are indeed multilingual, because they using Japanese and English. For German companies it is the same. And that is referring to the "elephant in the room", the big avoided topic until now and that is the role of English. Is English impeding Multilingualism or stimulating it? Of course this question is very difficult to answer in short, but the whole structure of this blog should make my opinion clear: English can be an important agent for Multilingualism, if used properly. And this is leading to the second topic: How can plurilingual people and their identities be promoted. And here schools have indeed an important role. But the problem here in Japan is that the basic tool for the promotion of Plurilingualism, the English language is not working smoothly here in Japan. Again a long discussion is needed for this topic, there no simple reasons for this. But it seems to me a good idea to invest in the English education in Japan. I would also like to help here and this is also one reason of this blog. But it is difficult for me to work for the English education in Japan, because I am not an English native speaker. A student of the Chukyo University did a survey on the JET program in Japan and it is indeed very difficult to get a position as a teaching assistant, if you not coming from an Inner circle English speaking country (UK, USA, Australia or Canada, see World Englishes (WpE) for background). With the exception of Canada (French) and the Republic of Ireland, which is still an English speaking country, officially English in multilingual contexts is then not recognized. Then the third point resilience. I had a surgery this year, not a big deal, but I had to go in a hospital for a few days. Everything was working fine and fortunately nobody tried to speak English (or even German) to me in the Hospital. Japanese worked fine for me and I did not have to learn English part of the body vocabulary for this medical treatment. Of course I had to learn some new words in Japanese and this is essential, because I also have to speak to my wife about my condition and for this I also needed the Japanese words. I am not saying that this the way for all residents with a non Japanese mother tongue. However, for resilience inside Japan, Japanese is needed. But there is more, because Japan is necessarily a very resilient country. Earthquakes are often here and what is seen as the Fukushima disaster worldwide is seen as the Tohuku earthquake and tsunami in Japan (Wp-link). For international cooperation in more and more difficult times English is needed, but that is not the English only of the inner circle countries. But what about other languages then? Of course there is more, the multilingual repertoire of the society, which is a world society. Here the Internet provides us with opportunities, but the opportunities of Wikipedia or Duolingo will be covered in another post.                    

burning Nationalism

 or Undetected echo-chambers! 

Since the latest media revolution, especially since it social media part, with the take off of Facebook, Twitter et al the echo chambers (Wp with backgrounds) is a topic, which is burning like the planet. Especially since the Trump Presidency this topic gained more attention, see as an e.g. this article in "The Conversation", which is also refering to Trump. But the topic has a longer history, even when referrerd to other key-words, like "Denialists", which is used by Naomi Klein (2014). The concept of "Denialism" (WpE) looks as it might psychological misconception of (some) individuals to face the truth:    "The facts are not getting through as Anne Applebaum is expressing this so eloquently in the "Atlantic". While I don't doubt that there a psycholigical factors contributing to this, I doubt that it should be reduced to psychological reasons alone. 

The thesis of the post (and the background research) is: These echo chambers have been there since the establishment of the public sphere (WpE, has also the link to the important book form Habermas (1962/1989). Habermas is making clear that the public sphere is an ideological construct, which is always giving a certain groups of members access to it. Whealthy white man had access to since the creation of this publich sphere, in the (respective) national-states. While the access has broadend since the 20 century, one essential restriction of access has not been eliminated and is contributing to existence of "burning nationalism", which is language. Without the sufficient knowledge of the national language a contribution to the publis sphere was not possible. One might argue, that it is the fact, that a member of the public sphere is born into the language. However, the relation is more complex, somewhat comparable to "gender" (WpE has some fact about the background of the concept)  as a social category, compared to the biological sex (McEhlinny 2012 gives backgounds to th comparision of gender and language): Language is a made a category made by certain types of societies, which are called national states. While "gender" and "race" (Kendi 2017 for more) has been researched lately, the research of  "language" a social construct is still in the initial stage. There are several reasons for the problems with this research, but they have to be adressed, because if they stay hidden, one of the most important hidden backgrounds of the dangerous "buring nationalism" keeps on smoldering.     

References:

• Kendi, Ibram X (2017), Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Nation books     
• Klein, Naomi (2014), This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate, Schuster & Schuster 
  
• McElhinny, Bonnie (2012), Silicon Valley Sociolinguistics? Analyzing Language, Gender and Communities of Practice in the New Knowledge Economy, in: Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit (Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism) ed by Duchêne, Alexandre    
  

After the Corona-Crisis: A New & Green Deal for the World?

Foto: Nuon/Jorrit Lousberg

While the Corona-Pandamic is indeed far from over, speculations about the future giving hope in these dark times. Even the large EU rescue plan, which also includes a strong green component seems to be not enough as Greta Thumberg point out (in the Guardian). Joe Biden announced a plan for Green Energy, which will nevertheless will be diffucult to implement. (both links Guardian) Are Greta Thumberg or Oliver Milman too strict or too pessimitic? No, that is not the problem, but hope alone is not enough for creating a change in the problem of climate change. There are real complexities involved. Recently Jeff Gibbs and Roger Moore tried to show some of the problems "Green Energy" is going to face (youtube-link to the film), but they really showed is that it is not easy to make a film about such a complex matter (as the critics of "debunked" showed, see also the Wikepedia-page for more backgronds). While there are films about climate change and environmental problems, e.g. "A Fierce Green Fire" or the "4.Revolution", about a shift in the energy production (in German), these matters are not easy to explain in a film. Wikipedia-pages (not one page alone) can convey a better picture, but for this several pages has to be combined. At first there is no page called "climate change", there is the page "climate variablity and change", if one searches for "climate change", there is a direction to "Global warming" (see the link), which is the effect of climate change globally, not locally. There might be place, which acutally get colder, an example could be Europe, if the North Atlantic Current would get weaker, not only because of Global warming, but also changes in ocean. In short: "Global warming" is only a headline of a much more complex process. The complexity is also affecting the discussion about climate change, which is indeed a very complex change, a much better conceptual tool is the Anthropocene debate. But how should the New & Green deal? For the reduction of complexity I have to concentrate one factor, which seems to of central importance: energy denisity (Wp). Solar power has, compared to coal or Gasoline, a low energy density. The means you need to create very big solar panels to create the energy, that is saved in a liter of fuel (Homer-Dixon 2006). And more problems:  1. solar power is difficult to save. Batteries are still expensive and their lifespan is not so long. 2. Intermittency: If it is cloudy the sun is weaker and there is not so much energy. 3. EROI (=Energy return on investment, Wp). Solar energy needs large investments and there is less money coming back, compared to fossil energy. Fossil energy is developed since over 150 years and EROI is still large. All these four reason are not strong enough to impede thenecessary transition from fossil energy to renewable energy, but they show the complexity of this transition. It can be seen in Germany, which was one of the first countries to start an Energy transition (an URL about some of the problems), but still a lot of problems are unsolved. But these arguments are largely not heard in public, specialists of course know some of the problems, but maybe it is difficult to find ONE specialist, who has the solution for all the problems, because there are not only technical, but also social (see social engineering) or political. It seems to be, that a more decentral energy supply would be helpful, for a transition to renewable energy, but here are massive economic interests involved, which make such transitions difficult (even in Sweden, see the case of the rafinery Lysekil). And an international deliberation is more needed than ever. Not only for specialists, but for the international public as well.                                               

Reference

Homer-Dixon, Thomas (2006), The upside of down, Resource and Conflict Analysis, (Souvenir press), London  

patterns of social engineering (not only masks...)

Social engineering (WpE), in "Applied"Social Sciences, is multidmensional concept see Disambiguation pages in Wikipedia. Here used as an attempt of institutions to change the culture, in the sense of the social behaviour of the cultural agents. This article will demonstrate dimensions of social engineering related to three aspects:

1. individual behavior, especially wearing masks
   
2. the new corona warn app
3. some findings on testing and vaccination    

1.Although the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, the numbers are showing clearly distinct cultural patterns: this was discussed briefly in a post before and more in depth analysis about France, Germany and Japan can be seen here (showing presentations from June 18., organized by the Maison Franco-Japanese and Deutsches Institut fuer Japanstudien, both in Tokyo). Discussing the previous post in my seminar, I learned that the wearing of face masks is in Japan introduced in school during the delivery of the school lunch meals, by the students. To prevent the spread of influenza germs the elementary school students are trained to wash their hand thoroughly and wear masks. This influenza protection hygiene in Japan seems to be one (cultural) factor very important for the relatively low death rate of Covid-19 in Japan.   

2.Corona Tracing Apps are one another important aspect, closely related to social engineering in the 21st century. But in this context an explicit definition of "social engineering" is needed, because searching (on Google) the terms "social engineering corona apps" is showing some interesting results: "What COVID-19 teaches us about social engineering?" (Blog "Dark reading"), but here "social engineering" is meant in the sense of information security, while this post is covering "social engineering" as a concept in the social sciences, which talks about possibility to change the social behaviours of people (= the culture) through technical measures. But is the Coronoa tracing app really social engineering? i.e. Is the Corona tracing app designed to change the behaviour of persons? The answer can only be: It depends on the app! There are various Covid-19 apps (Wp) around. Some countries are using the Covid-19 pandemic to expand mass surveillance (Guardian) on their own population. The Norway example (tech-crunch) shows that in this country the warnings of Data protection Agency is this country is taken seriously. And other Apps are specially designed not to be violate the privacy of its users. The swiss developted app (BBC, see also, in German, Spiegel online and the NZZ about the app-development) designed in cooperation with Apple and Google is built to avoid data-storage at a central place. The App can therefore only used to inform about the possibility of a Covid-19 infection. In the case of this app, the level of social engineering is deliberately low. The app called COCOA (see Mainichi-article 28/6/2020) in Japan (The Verge, 19/6/2020) developed in cooperation with Microsoft follows the same principles. Not all countries developed an own app in the UK (Guardian) the Google and Apple will be used directly. But in countries, where the decentral Bluetooth-approach is applied the social engineering aspect of the apps is (in the moment) very small, the users only have to install the new app, but they do not have to change their behaviour in other ways.

3. Testing and vaccination is not all aspects linked to individual behaviour. Only when a person decides to go to doctor and get a vaccination (e.g. against Influenza), this would be a relation to individual behaviour. But epidemic outbreaks shape social behaviour, as one can see in Covid-19 pandemic, therefore the prevention of pandemics also has great influences. And the prevention of pandemics was after the 19 century: vaccination. Vaccination policies (Wp) were rolled out to prevent epidemics and create immunity in the population ("herd immunity"). But mandatory vaccination has also be a controversial issue, as the history of anti-vaccination shows. (History of vaccines, Blog). In a lot of countries the population does not trust their governments, because of the history of oppression and it not surprising that the trust of population to their governments is in some african countries very low.  (Médecins Sans Frontières = MSF, see also the Interview of Karline Kleijer of MSF in Spiegel online, in German).